Alison Weir Quotes

#1. Each man was born to his degree, and a happy man was one who did not question his place in life.

Alison Weir

#2. At six o'clok the young King's terrible sufferings finally ended. After his eyes had closed for the last time, the tempeste raged on. Later, superstitious folk claimed that Henry himself had sent it, and had risen from his grave in anger at the subversion of his will.

Alison Weir

#3. 'Britain's Royal Families' became my first published book, in 1989, from The Bodley Head, and the rest of the story is - dare I say it? - history!

Alison Weir

#4. Men, however, were encouraged to sow their wild oats, but a woman who did so became a social outcast and ruined her chances of making a good marriage.

Alison Weir

#5. ... only one man could have been responsible for their deaths: Richard III.

Alison Weir

#6. You must pray to God for forgiveness because I can give you none

Alison Weir

#7. I will never give him the satisfaction of knowing how much he has wounded and enraged me. In my silence lies my strength.

Alison Weir

#8. What she loved was being admired, being wanted, being pursued - but she did not think she wanted ever to be caught.

Alison Weir

#9. I feel very strongly that where the facts exist, a historical novelist should use them if they're writing about a person who really lived, because a lot of people come to history through historical novels. I did. And a lot of people want their history that way.

Alison Weir

#10. 7. CCR; Robert of Reading; Murimuth; Dugdale, Monasticon; Annales

Alison Weir

#11. Swearing, drunkenness, "haunting bad houses," fighting, and drawing graffiti - hugh penises were a favourite - on the palace walls were all punishable by warnings,

Alison Weir

#12. She had already decided that, when she grew up, she was going to do whatever she pleased and not let anyone order her about.

Alison Weir

#13. His handsome face is suffused with rage. He stands before me shaking, then to my disgust, bursts into noisy tears; "I shall tell my mother of you!" he sobs and crashes out of the chamber

Alison Weir

#14. If only they would all just leave me alone with my books and my letters, I would be content to let life, and the world pass me by

Alison Weir

#15. Court life for a queen of France at that time was, however, stultifyingly routine. Eleanor found that she was expected to be no more than a decorative asset to her husband, the mother of his heirs and the arbiter of good taste and modesty.

Alison Weir

#16. I prefer to be left alone with my books.

Alison Weir

#17. Since mediaeval times, the King had been seen as two bodies in one: a mortal entity and "the King's person," representing unending royal authority; monarchs therefore referred to themselves in the plural form as "we.

Alison Weir

#18. It did not do to give your heart to a man so entirely, she thought. Men did not value what they came by easily. Once you loved, you laid yourself open to pain.

Alison Weir

#19. This led to a lessening of confidence in the judicial system. Justice, it seemed, was available only to those who could pay enough to secure a 'right verdict

Alison Weir

#20. If only the Fates had granted him a longer stay in this

Alison Weir

#21. Some of my subjects do not know what is good for them,

Alison Weir

#22. I steel myself to ignore his taunts and his coarse language. I no longer care what he says or does. It doesn't matter anymore. I am detached, contained in my own private world where he cannot reach me. It is my last refuge.

Alison Weir

#23. At school, up to the age of sixteen, I found history boring, for we were studying the Industrial Revolution, which was all about Acts, Trade Unions and the factory system, and I wanted to know about people, because it is people who make history.

Alison Weir

#24. An objective viewpoint was beyond her; she was single-minded to a fault.

Alison Weir

#25. But I wish you to know that, were I just Edward and you just Jane, I would prefer to marry you. We accord well together, and have similar views ... Kings cannot make their own choices. I wished you to know that

Alison Weir

#26. a royal bride could come to enjoy considerable power and influence, as did both Katherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn. Yet such status and power emanated solely from her husband. She enjoyed no freedoms but those he permitted her. Without him, she was nothing. Queens

Alison Weir

#27. I waste so much time sleeping. And time is of all losses the most irrecuperable, for it can never be redeemed.

Alison Weir

#28. My lady, for your virtue and goodness, God would receive you in rags.

Alison Weir

#29. The first Elizabeth film was an absolute travesty historically. It really was sloppy. Things like 'The Other Boleyn Girl' and 'The Tudors,' people's perception is distorted because of these. It matters to me as a historian, because I spend my life trying to get it right.

Alison Weir

#30. In one sphere above all others, Anne Boleyn still had the power to influence him, and that was in the case of church reform. Anne was a passionate and sincere evangelical, the owner of a library of controversial reformist literature, and she was sympathetic to radical and even Lutheran ideas.

Alison Weir

#31. Zionists exploited, exaggerated, invented, or even perpetrated "anti-Semitic" incidents both to procure support and to drive Jews to immigrate to the Zionist-designated homeland. A few examples are discussed below.

Alison Weir

#32. History was a hobby for about, oh, 20 years before I got into print.

Alison Weir

#33. If silences could be pregnant, then this one went to full term.

Alison Weir

#34. Until quite recently women's histories were largely overlooked but in the wake of feminism there has been increasing interest in retrieving them.

Alison Weir

#35. If people really want to know and learn from history, why do they want bad history? Why don't they want good history? Wouldn't you rather know the truth, rather than the legend?

Alison Weir

#36. A king was the Lord's anointed, hallowed at his coronation with holy oil.

Alison Weir

#37. Many people have told me that my books read like novels. Perhaps this is because, when I write, I feel I am really there, so strong is my feeling for my subject. On occasion, I have been so moved by the events I have been describing that I have felt like crying.

Alison Weir

#38. At Sandwich, in 1579, she paid the magistrates' wives a great compliment when, without employing a food taster, she sampled some of the 160 dishes they had prepared for her and even ordered some to be taken to her lodgings so that she could eat them later.

Alison Weir

#39. When these with violence were burned to death,
We wished for our Elizabeth.

Alison Weir

#40. between Scylla and Charybdis,

Alison Weir

#41. As their forces broke, the Yorkist cavalrymen raced to the horse park behind their own lines and mounted their steeds to give chase. As they thundered past, the King and Warwick, flushed with victory, yelled, 'Spare the commons! Kill the lords!' Their words went unheeded.

Alison Weir

#42. It gives me a huge buzz when people say they've enjoyed my books, because this grew out of a hobby, and it's an absolute passion, and it's lovely when I get feedback.

Alison Weir

#43. It is too dangerous to meddle in the marriage of princes,' he muttered as he withdrew. Arundel made a joke at his expense, saying 'He lost his post as Chancellor that day, for the Queen had usurped it,' which drew wry laughter from the deputation.

Alison Weir

#44. One French ambassador, having witnessed the royal temper, confided, 'When I see her enraged against any person whatever, I wish myself in Calcutta, fearing her anger like death

Alison Weir

#45. The Union of the Two Noble and Illustrious Families of Lancaster and York,

Alison Weir

#46. Although, by todays standards, he set a vast amount of work, he believed as he told Mrs Ashley, that 'If you pour much drink into a goblet, the most part will dash out and run over'. In Ascham's view, it was the carrot, and not the stick, that worked.

Alison Weir

#47. She was not so forbearing when it came to bad breath. After receiving one French envoy, she exclaimed, 'Good God! What shall I do if this man stay here, for I smell him an hour after he has gone!' Her words were reported back to the envoy, who at once betook himself back to France in shame.

Alison Weir

#48. I love reading about the supernatural, and time-slip novels, and the mistress of both is Barbara Erskine.

Alison Weir

#49. There are too many Dudleys already in this world

Alison Weir

#50. I must bear it well as I may. As my sainted mother used to say, we never come to the kingdom of Heaven but by troubles.

Alison Weir

#51. Kat embraced her, concealing her dismay as best she could. For these few months, fraught as they were, Elizabeth had been entirely hers again.

Alison Weir

#52. Was I right?" she asked him. "Was I right to make a stand against what I believed to be wrong? Even though many ills have come from it? I have been asking myself this a lot lately. I must be quiet in my conscience.

Alison Weir

#53. Often, little brother, there is no smoke without fire.

Alison Weir

#54. Be well advised what ye put in his head, for ye shall never pull it out again.

Alison Weir

#55. Large and excellent joints, the delicacies and cleanliness customary in Italy were wanting

Alison Weir

#56. Only during courtship might a woman briefly gain the upper hand, as both Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour did, but woe betide her if she did not quickly learn to conform once the wedding-ring was on her finger. The

Alison Weir

#57. They inhabited a lost world of splendour and brutality, a world dominated by religious change, in which there were few saints.

Alison Weir

#58. But what use was the semblance of power without the substance?

Alison Weir

#59. In the South of England northerners were regarded then as uncouth, brutish, undisciplined savages ...

Alison Weir

#60. Again, she may have made the equation that sexual involvement was inextricably linked with death.

Alison Weir

#61. When I started researching history in the 1960s, a lot of women about whom I've subsequently written were actually footnotes to history. There was a perception that women weren't important. And it's true. Women were seen historically as far inferior to men.

Alison Weir

#62. From whom but the Devil did this advice come under which you are acting? Those who are urging you to repeat your former wrongdoings against an innocent person are seeking in this not your honour but their own convenience. They are clearly the enemies of your crown and the disturbers of your realm.

Alison Weir

#63. He was not afraid, in fact he was content to go: So much that had been pleasurable in his life was now beyond his capacity, and that he could not bear.

Alison Weir

#64. Life was good, and already she understood that to be aware of happiness when you were actually feeling it, and not just in retrospect, was to be happy indeed.

Alison Weir

#65. I cannot go with you all the way on your journey, but I would go as far as I might

Alison Weir